Decentralized humanitarian aid deployment: reimagining the delivery of aid
Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management
ISSN: 2042-6747
Article publication date: 4 December 2019
Issue publication date: 3 February 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Current centralized humanitarian aid deployment practices may encourage urbanization thereby weakening short- and long-term resiliency of lower-income countries receiving aid. The purpose of this paper is first, to explore these shortcomings within the peer-reviewed literature and, second, propose a starting point for a solution with a decentralized humanitarian aid deployment (DHAD) framework.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a focused, qualitative review of available and relevant literature.
Findings
The literature reviewed demonstrates that current centralized humanitarian aid deployment models lack meaningful engagement of local assets while indicating a plausible connection between these same models and disaster urbanization. Next, the literature shows introducing a new decentralized model could represent a sustainable aid deployment standard for that country’s specific response, recovery, mitigation and planning opportunities and constraints.
Research limitations/implications
The next step is to develop a working DHAD model for a lower-income country using a multi-layered, GIS analysis that incorporates some or all of the socioeconomic and environmental variables suggested herein.
Practical implications
The practical potential of the DHAD framework includes establishing the impacted country in the lead role of their own recovery at the moment of deployment, no longer relying on foreign logistics models to sort it out once aid has arrived.
Originality/value
This paper discusses a topic that much of the literature agrees requires more research while suggesting a new conceptual framework for aid deployment best practices which is also largely absent from the literature.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the Georgetown University Master’s Program in Emergency and Disaster Management for the support of this paper and related ongoing research. The authors would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for providing time and feedback which resulted in a better final product.
Citation
Wood, E.X. and Frazier, T. (2020), "Decentralized humanitarian aid deployment: reimagining the delivery of aid", Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management, Vol. 10 No. 1, pp. 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHLSCM-05-2019-0037
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited